


when all your heroes get tired, i'll be something better yet

by prettydizzeed



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Tony Stark is a terrible mentor, but he's trying (kind of)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 13:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: It was pretty clear that even though Peter had turned down Mr. Stark’s offer of moving in with the Avengers, he'd still been expecting their relationship to change. Like, maybe that Mr. Stark would call him back occasionally, or ever, or would check in on how the whole friendly neighborhood Spider-Man thing was going, or try again to get him to join the Avengers…Ned had never met Mr. Stark, but he figured out pretty quickly that Peter’s expectations were entirely unrealistic.





	when all your heroes get tired, i'll be something better yet

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "All My Heroes" by Bleachers

It was pretty clear that even though Peter had turned down Mr. Stark’s offer of moving in with the Avengers, he'd still been expecting their relationship to change. Like, maybe that Mr. Stark would call him back occasionally, or ever, or would check in on how the whole friendly neighborhood Spider-Man thing was going, or try again to get him to join the Avengers…

Ned had never met Mr. Stark, but he figured out pretty quickly that Peter’s expectations were entirely unrealistic. For one thing, as far as Ned could tell, Mr. Stark didn't call anyone back. He had people for that. (For his people to actually do that, though, would require him remembering to tell them, which Ned’s research led him to believe was extremely unlikely. The man had invented a groundbreaking AI to essentially be his butler; normal things like Post-It notes were beneath him.)

(Then again, Ned couldn't find much information about JARVIS, but he figured it—he?—was capable of recording voice memos. So maybe Mr. Stark was just an asshole.)

Ned had, of course, been obsessing over the Avengers for eight years, but now in addition to his comic books and action figures and outgrown costumes, he had a series of thick folders in the bottom drawer of his desk filled with information on each of them, starting with the basic news articles and going as far as police reports of various crimes they'd stopped from the NYPD records, which was the only government database he was willing to try to hack.

The folder labeled **Tony Stark / Iron Man** was the thickest, and was thorough enough that Ned knew exactly what inappropriate remark Mr. Stark would make about how fitting that was. This was partially because Mr. Stark was in the news, and the tabloids, far more often than the other Avengers—although the **Steve Rogers / Captain America** folder had plenty of articles from the forties, and every word of the museum exhibit—but it also had a lot to do with the fact that Mr. Stark was the one who regularly interacted with Peter.

Or didn't interact with Peter, as the case may be.

Ned had grown used to buying a carton of ice cream every time Peter said he had a meeting with Mr. Stark that day and showing up at Aunt May’s apartment with it around the time Peter got back. They'd eat the double chocolate fudge directly from the carton while Aunt May rolled her eyes and said they'd better stay out of her stash, and Peter would complain about how Mr. Stark had been in India or France or Mexico again, or had been in Manhattan and still hadn't shown because of “urgent business,” or had actually been in the room for once and had made whatever rude comments about Peter’s latest mission.

Very rarely, the meeting would go well, and then the ice cream was celebratory. Today was not one of those times.

“It's just, he gives me all this cool stuff, and then he expects me not to use it, you know?” Peter was waving his spoon around as he spoke. A small drop of melted ice cream landed on the table, and Ned wiped it up quickly before Aunt May could come in and notice. She had a gift for appearing at exactly the wrong time.

“Like, I've been doing this, I mean, not as long as he has, but a long time, right? And he still acts like I can't handle it.”

Peter and Mr. Stark had an argument about the suit’s features pretty much every two weeks. Peter always said that Mr. Stark had asked him to be an Avenger, that meant he was capable of using it; Mr. Stark always countered that Peter wasn't an Avenger, and therefore had no need for acidic webbing or whatever else it was capable of when Peter was mostly just dealing with petty criminals.

Sometimes Ned wondered if JARVIS was just playing back Mr. Stark's responses from the previous times they'd had this argument.

“Maybe he's pissed because I turned him down.” Peter scraped the last of the chocolate from the bottom of the carton.

“You said he told you that was a test, though, right?” Ned had his own theory about this based on the timing of the press conference announcing Mr. Stark's engagement, but he wasn't about to bring that up with Peter.

“Right. Yeah.” Peter slumped in his chair. “There's gotta be some explanation for him not wanting me to use all the features, though.”

Ned shrugged. “I mean, you did hack the suit the last time he installed programs you weren't supposed to access, and it kinda threw you off your game. Maybe he figures if he doesn't install the features, you can't get to them when you don't need them and mess up your routine.”

“I dunno, maybe.” Peter looked at him. “ _You_ hacked the suit, though.”

Ned couldn't help but grin at that, like he did every time Peter pointed out some way Ned had helped him. “Hey, I thought we agreed not to implicate me as an accomplice.”

Peter was starting to smile now. “Yeah, and that'll last up to the point where Mr. Stark wants me to hack something, or code something, or whatever, and then he’ll realize that there's no possible way that was me.”

“Well, until then, I really don't want Iron Man pissed at me.” He was already pissed at Iron Man often enough.

“Fair enough.”

Ned got up to throw the empty carton away, and to grab a paper towel, which he slid across the table at Peter when he got back. Peter had chocolate all around his mouth. It was distracting.

It was almost 10:30, and Ned still had chem homework to do, but he stayed until Aunt May came back into the kitchen and said if his mom wasn't on the way she was driving him back right then. Peter got up to come with them, but she stopped him. “You still have an essay to write, mister. Don't even think about going out that window until it's done.”

Aunt May didn't want to be informed about the details of Peter’s nightlife as long as he hadn't gotten injured, but she'd mostly stopped trying to talk him out of it and instead begun trying to ensure that he kept up with his schoolwork, too. It seemed to mostly be working, even if she had asked Ned to install a program on her computer that blocked any videos of Spider-Man fighting.

He followed her down to the car, and they rode to his house in silence. Before he got out, though, she turned to look at him.

“Thank you for doing this for Peter. He might not realize how much effort you put into it, but I know he's glad you're there.” She patted Ned’s shoulder, awkward but sincere. “I'm glad he has a friend like you.”

“Thank you,” Ned managed, smiling at her, and went inside.

It wasn't like he'd thought Peter acted all oblivious around Ned and then secretly was like “wow, he gets his mom to drive him to the store to get ice cream every single time I meet with Mr. Stark, often really last-minute because I forget to mention it until I'm on the way back, and has to spend his own money because his mom refuses to enable his consumption of high fructose corn syrup, and then walks from the store to Aunt May’s apartment fast enough that he gets back when I do but not so fast that he squishes the carton or drops it while running and damn, that's a lot of work, he's a good friend and also would make a good boyfriend.”

Because Peter didn't think that way. Despite all of his crime-solving abilities, he seemed to think Ned just appeared whenever he needed him. Which was okay, because Peter admitted that he needed him, and that was reason enough to be there.

And it wasn't like Ned was doing all of that just because he wanted Peter to kiss him. He’d have done it anyway, and had been doing similar stuff since middle school. It'd just… be nice if Peter wanted to kiss him, too.


End file.
